


ferris wheel lights on

by vlieger



Category: Tennis RPS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vlieger/pseuds/vlieger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Novak thinks for a long time that he'd like to get to know Rafael Nadal a little better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ferris wheel lights on

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meretricula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/gifts).



Novak thinks for a long time that he’d like to get to know Rafael Nadal a little better. He keeps hearing, keeps reading about this Spanish wonder kid, about his forehand to rival Federer’s and his terrifying persistence, but there’s just something about his ridiculous, too-long shorts and sleeveless shirts, and the sweet, self-conscious way he smiles through his hair, ducking his head, that puts a stop to anything potentially intimidating and catapults him straight into endearing. 

 

So it’s kind of fitting that the first time they really speak goes the way it does, out on the practice courts. Novak doesn’t even know Rafa’s there, to begin with; he’s winding up his session with his usual dose of stupidity, putting on one of his imitations for Djordje, who’s clutching the net with one hand and his stomach with the other, giggling uncontrollably. When he looks up he sees Rafa, standing on the baseline of the next court over with his racket balanced between his knees and a towel around his neck. He’s laughing behind his hand, eyes bright, crinkling at the corners. Novak grins at him as he heads towards the net, cuffing Djordje lightly around the back of the head. 

“Maria Sharapova, si?” says Rafa, pulling the racket from between his legs. 

“Yeah.” Novak nods.

Rafa smiles. “Is funny,” he says. “There is more?”

“Lots more.” Novak winks and then laughs at himself.

Rafa tilts his head. Novak’s had a lot of people who didn’t like it when he's imitated them, but even before he does Rafa smiles and says, “You can copying me, si?” like it's a challenge. Novak doesn’t tell him, then, that he’s been working on it for some time. 

 

“Is good,” Rafa tells him after the US Open match against Carlos. “Is very okay. But maybe needing more work, si? Only very little.” Rafa bites his lip, trying and failing to hold back a smile.

Novak peers haughtily over the top of his glasses. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “My match.” He waves a hand. “Brilliant. My imitation.” He waves again. “Brilliant.”

Rafa rolls his eyes, plucking Novak’s glasses from his face and sliding them on. “Rafa,” he says, scrunching his nose in an attempt to imitate Novak’s haughty expression, “Rafa, I’m brilliant, si, better than everyone! No one can beating me!” Novak snorts and Rafa tilts his head, adds, “Except you, Rafa, you too good, I no can beating you.”

“Aha,” says Novak, laughing. “Terrible. I never say that.”

Rafa grins, passing the glasses back. “My imitation.” He waves a hand. “Brilliant.”

“Better.” Novak nods, biting at the inside of his cheek. 

 

It’s midnight when there’s a knock at his door. Novak blinks and shuffles over slowly to answer it; he hadn’t been sleeping, not quite, but his eyes are heavy, his limbs slow. It’s Rafa. Novak blinks again. 

“Hola,” says Rafa, smiling a crooked half-smile. “You having playstation?” 

“I,” says Novak. “Yeah, how did you-- ”

“Is rumour,” says Rafa, tilting his head and grinning. 

Novak grins back, shaking his head. “You want to play?”

Rafa nods. “You have no match tomorrow. I check, si?”

“How kind,” laughs Novak, shutting the door and following Rafa to the couch. 

 

Rafa starts coming over a lot when they’re at the same tournament. “Why don’t you have your own, if you love playing so much?” asks Novak one time. 

Rafa shrugs. “Is no need, si? You have.” His grin is quick and impish, half-hidden behind the curtain of his hair. 

“This shit isn’t easy to carry all over the world, you know,” says Novak, indicating with the controller at the rest of the cables. “I got stopped at an airport, once. They thought I was carrying a bomb.”

Rafa stares, and then dissolves into a choking fit of giggles. “Oh,” he gasps, “I wanting to see. Is funny, no? They take you away? Lock you up?” He blinks and laughs some more. 

Novak hurls a pillow at him. “I think, if you want to keep using my playstation, we have to talk about joint custody.”

 

Rafa, to be fair, does offer to take the playstation to the next tournament, since they’re both playing there anyway. He gets as far as trying to fit it into his suitcase, but, “Is no good,” he says, shaking his head. He’s got a sneaker in one hand and a coil of cables in the other. 

“Why,” says Novak, “_Why_ do you need so many shoes? No one needs so many shoes. Even Roger Federer can’t have this many shoes.”

“Roger having more shoes,” says Rafa absently, dumping the cables onto the bed and fitting the shoe into an empty pocket of space. 

“More?” says Novak incredulously, shaking his head.

“To go with his many clothes, si?” says Rafa, slanting a glance at him, eyes bright, laughing. 

“I bet they’re not all sneakers though, are they?”

Rafa crosses his arms. “I like,” he says defensively. 

Novak’s too busy laughing to argue anymore. 

 

He watches Rafa practice in London. He’s beautiful and graceful like Novak’s never been, or tried to be; the colours of him, golden skin and dark eyes set against the white of his outfit and the green of the Wimbledon grass, the way he moves, quick-flowing and effortless, the way the pink rises in his cheeks and the damp curls catch about his neck. He sees Novak standing off to the side when he takes a break and points at him, grinning around the neck of his water bottle. “Why you no practice? Is lazy, no?” 

Novak tosses his head. “I,” he says, “Have already practiced.”

“You lie,” says Rafa. He sets his bottle down by his chair and grins like he thinks Novak can’t see. 

“You’re right,” says Novak seriously, nodding. “I never practice. I’m just that good.”

Rafa laughs as he jogs back onto the court. Novak watches him serve, the stretch of him, the perfect symmetrical cut of his hipbones sailing beneath the waistband of his shorts, and swallows, leaves.

 

There’s not a lot of time for anything but tennis at Wimbledon. Novak spends the few free hours he has with his family, sprawled in front of the TV with Djordje and Marko, always tired, always half-dozing. 

It turns out, too, there’s even less time than he thought. He’s not quite sure what to do with himself after he loses to Marat. Maybe it was arrogant of him to think so-- hell, he’s sure it was-- but he’d planned on a week at least, maybe even more. 

He’s leaning back into the couch, halfway to a pretty decent headache, when Rafa slips into the room. “Is no good.” Rafa sighs, sitting down on the other end of the couch and reaching over to pluck Novak’s glasses from his nose. He slides them on, squinting around the room. “I planning to beat you again. Is no good.”

Novak’s mouth twitches and the tension in his forehead loosens somewhat. “You look stupid,” he says.

Rafa tips his head downwards and peers over the top of the frames. “I no looking stupid.” He frowns, narrowing his eyes. 

“No, you’re right.” Novak huffs a laugh. “Actually, I think the glasses would go really well with those totally not-stupid shorts you wear.”

Rafa shakes his head sadly. “I coming here to say maybe you wanting to play football, and I ask your brothers, and they say yes, but maybe I go, si? Is not nice.”

Novak can see him trying not to smile, but he says, “Sorry,” anyway, and, “Football sounds good.”

“Good,” says Rafa. He stands, ruffling Novak’s hair and slipping the glasses carefully back onto his face.

 

Beijing is more than a little overwhelming. It’s so huge, all of it, the city, the stadiums, the fucking Olympics, all so new and uncharted. The feel of it, too, is different; but he likes that, he thinks. It’s not quite so lonely, somehow, as a tournament usually feels. He goes sightseeing with his family, chasing his brothers around Tiananmen Square and posing for photos in front of the Forbidden City, laughing like a twelve-year old and exchanging grimaces with Djordje and Marko when his mother tells him off for not setting a proper example. She’s smiling, though, fond and indulgent, clicking pictures when she thinks they’re not looking. 

He meets Rafa for lunch before he meets him in the semifinals, and Rafa forgoes the failsafe tourist spots in favour of picking streets at random and leading them into a maze of crowds and noise and stall upon stall upon stall. He gets them lost in the end, shaking his head when he realises and leading them into the first restaurant he sees, and after the meal Novak sighs and rolls his eyes and throws his napkin at Rafa, and calls the hotel from the relative quiet of the restaurant bathroom, jotting down directions with a borrowed pen on the inside of Rafa’s forearm. 

“You having arm,” says Rafa indignantly. “Why my arm? Why not borrow some paper?”

“Because,” says Novak, “You got us lost.”

Rafa frowns down at his arm and runs his other hand through his hair. “I finding us food.”

“Okay,” says Novak, placing a firm hand between his shoulderblades and pushing him out onto the street, “Now find the hotel.”

 

In New York he leans over the edge of his balcony, sighing, and says, “They don’t like me here.”

Rafa huffs a quiet laugh. “Is no matter, si? I like you.”

Novak smiles out at the city, the dark layered shadows of buildings and lights twinkling like stars through the windows, and says, “Yeah.”

 

He misses Rafa in Shanghai. It’s the first time he really realises how easy it’s all become, like breathing, like looking up no matter where he is and seeing his family in the player’s box, or counting how many times he bounces the ball before each serve. 

He doesn't see Rafa again that year, and there's some small, nagging worry about how the break might unravel this friendship they’ve coiled, but Rafa calls him at Christmas to say, or well, shout, “Feliz Navidad,” the voices and the clinking of plates just as loud on his end as on Novak’s, and at New Year to say, “Happy New Year,” and afterwards, when Novak’s finally finished sleeping off the last twelve months and starts heading out early each morning to practise, to say, “I seeing you in Melbourne, si? We having lunch.”

Novak smiles, squinting into the still-pale sunlight, and says, “As long as you don’t get us lost again.”

 

Melbourne’s kind of stupid, Novak thinks afterwards. He meets Rafa for lunch the day he arrives from Brisbane, and it’s ridiculously fucking hot, and of course Rafa gets them lost, and after the fifth autograph request on the same street corner they’ve passed at least six times now, Novak clicks his tongue and pushes Rafa into the first taxi he sees. 

“I knew it,” he says, back at the hotel. He sprawls across the couch, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. “Never again.”

Rafa’s got his legs stretched out across the floor, his back propped against the couch. He tips his head back onto the cushions, eyes closed, and grins up at the ceiling. “If I no getting lost, I never learning the way,” he says.

Novak rolls his eyes. “You sound like a fortune cookie.” 

Rafa snorts and stretches his arms above his head. Novak eyes the t-shirt riding up along his stomach and the beads of sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat, and leans down without thinking, pressing his mouth to Rafa’s. 

Rafa’s eyes fly open, and yet Novak feels strangely calm, holding himself there, waiting for Rafa to pull away. He fully expects it, too. There’s always been this distinction in his mind between himself and Rafa; Rafa’s beautiful, all liquid lines and bright smiles and sun-brown skin, and Novak’s scrawny, with angles more odd than pleasing, and hair that won’t behave. Rafa, though, Rafa doesn’t pull away, just brings a hand from where it's resting above his head to cup Novak’s jaw, and kisses back, soft and light and easy.

Yeah, Melbourne’s kind of stupid. Novak doesn’t give a shit.


End file.
